


Strategies in the Art of War

by stickmarionette



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon - First Anime, Daddy Issues, F/M, M/M, end of series spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-21
Updated: 2010-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-10 17:19:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/102183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickmarionette/pseuds/stickmarionette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Did you even know what you wanted of me?</i></p><p><i>…or was that one of the rare failures of the great Roy Mustang?  One of the things you didn't plan for, maybe didn't even think of?</i></p><p><i>I'm not sure which would please me more.</i> Ed comes back. Roy suffers a mild mid-life crisis.</p><p>Written in 2005.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strategies in the Art of War

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by blademistress and devils_devotion. Originally written for the steelandsparks Fluff/Angst Olympics, theme 'parent and child'.

_Did you even know what you wanted of me?_

…or was that one of the rare failures of the great Roy Mustang? One of the things you didn't plan for, maybe didn't even think of?

I'm not sure which would please me more. Because you see, I knew exactly what I wanted, even from the very beginning.

Did you ever realize that you had it all wrong?

Did you ever figure out what I was to you, in the end?

 

\--

 

**[Strategy 1 - Deceive the sky to cross the ocean.]**

Roy opens the door with one hand in his pocket, gloved. Paranoia is a creature of habit, after all, and military instincts never fade away no matter how useless they may become.

The sight that greets him at the door is a dream, an abomination of a vision that haunts his waking hours.

"Alphonse?" he asks, because he's sick of calling the boy by his brother's name, and getting an oddly pleased look from the younger Elric for it.

"No, you bastard, I'm not Al," the abomination snaps, and even the voice is right, exactly like in his own private visions.

Roy rubs at his remaining eye until it focuses once again, and this time it's unmistakable. The hair is _not_ one shade too dark, the eyes are _not_ coloured like the wrong precious metal, and no one else looks at him like that, _ever_, unless their name is -

"Why, were you expecting him?" Ed says, blandly, quirking an eyebrow. He is taller now - they are almost the same height. It's a strange thing, this.

Roy can only shake his hand and laugh, weakly, leaning against the doorframe for support. "No, no, I wasn't."

More than anything else, the passage of inexorable time in the years when Ed has been absent from Roy's life is easily measured by the change in his eyes. What had been like unquenchable fire before is now strangely placid –

"Going to invite me in?"

\- like the sea before a storm.

 

 

**[Strategy 4 - Make your enemy work while you wait at leisure.]**

"So - "

They stop, each sneaking a look at the other. There's a horribly awkward pause, and then both of them chuckle uncomfortably.

Ed shakes his head and flops down on Roy's couch, somehow taking up most of the space with minimal movement. He is entirely unself-conscious in his lazy sprawl, and Roy thinks that maybe this –

This is the first sign of change.

"You talk first," Ed says casually, waving an arm up at him. "I'm in no hurry."

Roy feels suddenly the need to sit down in dread of the forthcoming conversation, so he does, much more stiffly than the younger man. There is tension in the air between them, born of a separation of five years that seemed permanent. He remembers to be thankful that it was not, but that doesn't make this any easier.

"When did you get back from - " and he breaks off, gesturing vaguely, helplessly.

"- being away?" Ed says without missing a beat, twisted grin firmly in place. "About four months ago, I think. Been busy helping Al and Winry with things back home."

_Four months,_ Roy thinks. _Approximately sixteen weeks, 112 days – a hell of a long time – in which he lived happily with his family while I –_

What? Pined away? Struggled with my own irrational faith in his immortality, set against the apparent reality of his death?

Then the real irony of the date hits him, and it's all he can do not to laugh.

Eventually, Roy manages a ghost of his usual smirk, but it makes no dent in Ed's new, strangely placid exterior. Instead, the blond looks damnably amused, which makes Roy grits his teeth soundlessly – a technique well-learned from the military years.

"So what brings you here after all this time?"

_What happened to you? How have you changed and grown while I could not be there to witness it?_

Ed shifts uncomfortably at this, suddenly reticent. "I…heard about Lieutenant Hawkeye."

"Ah."

And that, indeed, is that. No more needs to be said on the topic, really. Ed still won't look up, though, and strangely this installs in Roy an irrational urge to spill it all, tell him everything.

"Al told me to come check up on you while I was here," Ed says quietly, eyes still glued to the couch. It's strange to watch him struggle like this, clearly at a loss for the appropriate words or even emotions in this peculiar situation.

The overwhelming urge to put Ed out of his misery prevails surprisingly quickly over his own abhorrence for discussing this particular topic. Roy has always had a soft spot for the boy Ed had been, especially in his rare moments of human, child-like weakness, when he would actually act in a manner that could almost be fitting to his physical age. It had been a damnably stubborn failing of his, and by the looks of things, it – frustratingly for him, fortunately for Ed - extends to the way he reacts to adult Ed as well.

"She died in childbirth four months ago," he says abruptly, brutally. Ed jerks as if he has been slapped and exhales heavily, a soft, dismayed 'oh' escaping him.

Still, he does not look up, nor does he speak.

Roy curses his own weakness, sighs, and begins to explain, to take Ed through one of the most painful experiences of his short and troubled life.

Much later, he is winding down his sorry tale and they are – somehow – mid-way through their fourth and second Scotches respectively. Roy catches a glimpse of what could be a small smile on Ed's lips through the amber liquid.

He wants to know what that smile means, but doesn't have the words to ask.

 

 

**[Strategy 5 - Loot a burning house.]**

Roy wakes up with an enormous headache and the clock pointing at well past noon the next day. There is someone clattering around the living room, and for one horrible, delirious moment, he almost calls out his dead wife's name. Thankfully, his head throbs in time to remind him quite forcefully of the events of the previous night, and he shuts his mouth on the words.

He picks himself up off the bed gingerly, wincing as muscles left in strange positions overnight voice their protests. A shower, he decides. A shower is what he needs before he can face the realities of the day - Maes gone, Riza and the baby both gone, Ed who was supposed to be _dead_ in his living room –

Judging by the footsteps down the hallway, Ed is evidently no longer in the living room. Biting back a heartfelt curse, Roy grabs for his bathrobe and just manages to get it fastened before Ed opens the door explosively.

He is dressed in the same strange, formal ensemble from the night before, which doesn't look at all rumpled. Roy makes a mental note to ask him if he even sleeps anymore. Not right at this moment, though. It's difficult to get into the appropriate mood for mocking condescension when one is clad only in a thin bathrobe.

"I knew you wouldn't knock," he says, and surprisingly manages a rueful smirk.

Ed blinks, as if the mere concept of it is alien to him. Then his eyes focus on Roy's state of undress and he colours faintly, but not before summoning up a smirk in return and holding out a mug like a peace offering.

"Coffee?"

Roy accepts the steaming mug with a raised eyebrow. It does smell great, but that alone can't keep him from attempting to get a rise out of Ed.

"Not poisoned, is it?"

Eerily, Ed mirrors his gesture - one eyebrow raised and with the same politely sceptical look. Seeing his own mannerisms perfectly copied on Ed is nothing less than frightening in some deeply disturbing way. After all, there's always been a fear at the back of his mind that Ed would one day turn into him, complete with the trauma and blood-stained hands.

Or maybe it's just strange to realise that he can no longer read Ed like a book – that Ed can now use himself as a well-polished mirror, deflecting all attempts to gain insight just as much as Roy can.

"Why would I bother poisoning you? Old bastard…" Ed trails off at this point, muttering something that sounds suspiciously like 'already has one foot in the grave' before resuming his normal volume, although there's still a touch of petulance in his tone. "I need you alive anyway."

Roy can't help it – he smirks outright this time, bathrobe or no. "Why would that be?"

Ed runs a hand through his ponytail distractedly, gaze occupied by a point just beyond Roy's left ear. "I want to stay in Central for a bit. See if I can figure out what I want to do with myself."

With an odd sense of shock, Roy finally realizes what Ed's behaviour so far has been pointing towards. There isn't much for someone like Ed to do, nowadays, which makes him just as much a retired – and therefore useless - dog of war as Roy.

That idea is simply far too amusing to pass up, so he presses on, feeling reassured of their respective positions in the world – him as the impenetrable one and Ed as the one constantly being undermined by others' understanding of him.

"And what would that have to do with me?"

Ed frowns thunderously at this, eyes snapping back to Roy's face at last. "Don't you have a spare bedroom?"

_Ah. That._

He hesitates, but only for a very brief moment. "Yes, you can use that…if you want to."

The spare bedroom, which used to house a cot, baby blankets and toys, which is still painted in soft blue –

"…thanks."

\- the irony is good enough to laugh about, and he probably will, as soon as he gets past this choked feeling in his throat.

 

 

**[Strategy 7 - Create something from nothing.]**

Roy doesn't regret letting Ed stay with him, but it does cause some strange inconveniences and raise certain uncomfortable questions, because he's never quite sure just how to treat the boy.

Ah. The boy. Therein lies the problem, because Ed isn't a boy, not anymore, not in appearance and not in mentality.

In fact, one can say that he has not been a boy in mentality for quite some time, but Roy has seen the best and worst sides of Edward Elric and knows that there has been a child hiding inside the Fullmetal Alchemist all those years ago.

So, Ed is an adult now. A very attractive adult, as any reasonable person would concede, sharp and elegant and detached in his white shirts with their odd black bands. He grins and smirks regularly, but hardly ever smiles with his eyes.

Ed is an adult, and an attractive one, that much is true and certain. And yet, it is equally true and certain that there is a part of Roy that will always see Ed as 'the boy', the tiny broken figure on the vast white bed, the one who insisted he didn't need protection and yet still aroused the parental instincts of all the adults around him.

 

 

**[Strategy 8 - Pretend to take one path while sneaking down the other.]**

"So what do you do these days?" Ed asks blandly while absent-mindedly smearing jam onto his toast.

It's the first morning after Ed decided to stay, and the atmosphere at the breakfast table is oddly domestic, almost family-like. Ed has made coffee again, and Roy managed to not burn the toast for once. It's not so bad, all things considered.

Roy has not read a single word of his newspaper in favour of surreptitiously watching Ed play with his butter knife, so when he does lift his head to meet the younger man's gaze, it is with some sense of lingering chagrin. Strangely, though, Ed is the one with his eyes roving all over the room, carelessly getting strawberry jam all over his flesh hand.

He eventually abandons the futile quest to meet Ed's eyes and speaks to the boy's jam covered fingers instead. "Nothing much useful, I'm afraid."

Ed pauses, toast half-way to his mouth to give him an odd look. "You still work with the government, don't you?"

"Only in a part-time advisory capacity," Roy says lightly. Ed doesn't look terribly interested, invested as he is in staring at his sticky fingers, but there is a particular tilt to his head that tells Roy he's paying attention, and that it's fine to continue. He opens his mouth to elaborate, but there's a contemplative flicker in Ed's eyes and then –

He starts licking the jam off his flesh hand with methodical swipes of the tongue. There's a thoughtful and somehow oddly sensual air about it all, and Roy is startled back into silence by the spectacle.

The boy – _no, not a boy, not anymore, not like this_ –

_Young man, then._ The young man who is now staring straight at him. For a moment, Ed's gaze seems almost _heated_ before he blinks, the shutters slamming down over that second of openness.

"Advisory? What about?"

Belatedly, Roy remembers that there is a silence to be filled, and that he is supposed to be the one to fill it. "Issues related to the former State Alchemists, mainly."

"Mmm," Ed says, and for a moment he looks a bit like a large cat – fed, complacent and terribly bored.

 

 

**[Strategy 10 – Hide the knife behind a smiling face.]**

For all his strange behaviour and odd habits, Ed is surprisingly pleasant to live with. Roy has lost count of the number of times he has passed the spare bedroom – the child's bedroom, Ed's bedroom – and seen the faintest glimmer of light shining from the tiny gap between the door and the floor. Maybe the blond really doesn't sleep, but he is quiet enough in waking that Roy can't find it in himself to mind.

Mostly, though, he spends days sitting curled in the biggest, most comfortable couch when the living room is bathed in sunlight and reads endlessly – books, newspapers, anything really – and never gets up to answer the phone. On other days he goes out walking at the crack of dawn and comes back at dusk, wordless.

He calls Al and Winry's shop at the same time everyday and talks for at least twenty minutes, quietly and warmly. At these times Roy has to find an excuse to leave the room – these are deeply private conversations, and he does not want to intrude. Still, the temptation to stay and watch is great, because at these times Ed looks like he's _healing_, somehow putting himself back together.

Roy wants to ask about the missing years, about the experiences that changed Ed from a cocky, high-spirited teenager into the more subdued but somehow also more confident and intense adult who turned up on his doorstep, but the words never make their way out of his throat.

They eat their meals in silence. Roy himself has always been a disastrous cook and Ed isn't much better, and eventually they reach an agreement of silence: if Ed doesn't complain about the burnt toast, then Roy won't mention his tendency to use far too much salt in every single dish, and so on.

Ed gets every single section of the newspaper first except the business pages, because that's the one he doesn't read. Roy had tried to reason with the blond over this – rather unfair, he'd thought – arrangement, but Ed had simply shrugged and suggested that they try it.

He understood once he saw Ed read, eyes flying down the page at a pace that was frankly frightening.

_Of course. I almost forgot._

The whole arrangement is almost comfortable, with none of the conflict Roy had envisioned at the beginning. He's tempted to attribute the success to his own tendency to stay in the study all day, but it's still something. If there are odd, jarring moments, they only occur when conversation is made.

"Did you love her?"

For example.

Ed asks him this abruptly one sunny afternoon as Roy comes out, searching for a drink.

It stops him short in his tracks, and surely he can be excused for freezing, because -

Well. It is rather strange to hear a question like that from Edward Elric of all people, although the blunt force of it is characteristic of him.

Roy looks for the words to form his answer, but there aren't _enough_ in the world, and the look on his face must have given it all up, because Ed's eyes darken and he says, dead certain:

"You did." And then softly, loftily, "good."

_What a way to offer condolences and sympathy._ Still, it is utterly typical of Ed, and that almost makes him smile.

It isn't until much later that Roy realizes the one-sided conversation may have had far too many layers to count or understand.

 

 

**[Strategy 14 – Borrow another's body to raise them.]**

"Happy birthday."

Ed pauses on the way to the coat-hanger to cast a surprised look at him. "Huh. Didn't think you would know that."

"I know many things you have no idea about," Roy says with a shade of his old smirk. "Surely you didn't think I was that unobservant, Fullmetal."

He expects Ed to roll his eyes at that, but is instead greeted with edged laughter. The blond shakes his head for a moment, clearly tempted to say something scathing before breaking down into helpless chuckles, forcing out a breathless 'never mind' in between bouts.

Roy waits patiently for Ed to calm down with a raised eyebrow and his best condescendingly sceptical look.

Ed doesn't speak again, though, not until they sit down for dinner. "You can't tell me that you don't know my name if you know my birthday."

"Of course I know your name, Fullmetal, don't be absurd."

"Then use it!" Ed snaps with surprising vehemence. "I'm not 'Fullmetal' anymore, _Mustang_."

Roy is quietly taken aback that Ed would care at all, but it makes sense – after all, the name of Fullmetal Alchemist holds enough negative connotations that the blond might want to be rid of it.

_Well, it_ is _his birthday. Perhaps I should be generous._

"All right, Edward," he says, inclining his head.

Ed looks surprised for a moment before breaking into a smile. It's small, his lips are barely turned up at the corners, but it looks real and that has to count for something.

Dinner is uneventful but not dreary, not at all like the many terribly empty meals Roy went numbly through in the past four months since the master bedroom had been robbed of its other occupant, since he had been robbed of his dream of a whole family in one horrible day.

_It's fitting,_ he used to think, _that I would lose my wife and child like this. After all, how many innocent women and children have these hands killed?_

These thoughts don't come anymore, or at least not as easily, and that makes him wonder.

Ed's presence is filling a hole in his broken life, but _which one is it?_

The beloved former soldier, pretty with a pistol and _so strong, so beautiful_ in life, or the son who he had never seen, the one who never got a chance at life?

 

 

**[Strategy 15 – Entice the tiger to leave the mountain.]**

The sun is bathing the living room in light yet again and Ed is curled up on the couch with a massive alchemical text, but Roy just wants a drink. Preferably a strong one.

_Today…it's six months, isn't it?_

Six months since Roy's cosy new life came tumbling down around his ears.

Irrationally he wishes for a thunderstorm to match the horrible significance of the day. Maybe he'll make it rain by alchemy if the sun didn't let up soon. The array doesn't need much modification.

Ed looks up as he enters the living room and doesn't even blink twice at the look on his face. Instead, he gestures to the couch next to his with an impatient look.

"You're not doing anything useful - come help me figure this out."

Roy fights the instinct to snap back and grabs onto the distraction. Arguing alchemy with Ed always left him drained and irritable but somehow feeling satisfied, and he wants to forget desperately enough to be put through the wringer today.

"You based some of your research on Sandringham's work with sigils, didn't you?" Ed asks, before he's even seated.

_Dragging out my own work…he must be feeling rather combative._

Excellent.

"What about it?"

"I think Sandringham's a hack."

"Oh? Is that an unsupported accusation?"

"No, look…"

It's a particularly gruelling argument, perhaps because of the expertise on both sides. Ed may be an alchemical genius, but Roy had been called a prodigy in his own days and could at least outmatch him in his own field. Many reference books are banished around, pen and paper is dragged out, and Roy thinks he might be having fun.

"…and that's why your assumptions are wrong," he finishes triumphantly, throwing down his pen with a flourish.

Instead of the expected scowl, Ed breaks out into a secretive smile.

_Wait, he_ knew…

"That's right," Ed says cryptically, and then, light and teasing, "don't move."

A strangely fierce look flashes through his eyes before he leans over and plants a light kiss on Roy's lips.

 

 

**[Strategy 16 - In order to capture, one must let loose.]**

Roy spends the rest of the day cursing himself for freezing. Ed is nowhere to be found and that worries him incessantly, almost like a parent with a teenage son –

And that is precisely the problem. The son – no longer teenage in this case, thank whatever deities listened to godless alchemists – is not supposed to kiss the father.

Ed had smiled, raw and bitter, before standing up and wandering out leisurely. Roy finds himself trying to think of ways to erase that expression from the blond's face.

_Edward, don't you see? I can't –_

I can't think of you that way.

It's an entirely hypocritical train of thought, because in fact he can and does think of Ed that way. But those thoughts inevitably tangle themselves with his paternal – entirely fatherly, even! – affection for the younger man, and –

He just doesn't want to.

 

 

**[Strategy 21 - False appearances.]**

Ed reappears a little after their usual dinner time, looking and acting completely normal. It throws Roy off at first, but then he figures that he's supposed to play along and pretend that nothing happened.

Indeed, everything goes according to routine, except for one thing.

"I went to visit her grave," Ed says, absent-mindedly cutting his steak. He casts a significant look at Roy as if this is supposed to have some deeper meaning.

Roy nods, silent. He doesn't think about Ed's words.

He doesn't want to.

 

 

**[Strategy 25 - Replace the beams and pillars with rotten timber to bring the building down.]**

Thinking isn't something that can be avoided, though, and so there are sleepless nights when he lies in bed, arguments and recriminations chasing themselves through his head.

There is that ever-present monster of guilt that presides over all of his affairs, of course. He's not only resigned to it by now – it's even welcome, sometimes.

Right now, it's only serving to confuse him further, blending with affection, concern and damnable desire for Ed and even a bit of moral outrage at himself.

Roy wonders about Ed. He wonders about the missing five years, about what happened in those years to make him so broken and bitter.

He wonders why the blond couldn't be normal in even one aspect of his life and be attracted to someone who wasn't old enough to be his father.

Above all, he wonders if he haunts Ed's thoughts and dreams the same way Ed haunts his own, and hates himself for it.

 

 

**[Strategy 28 - Cross the river and then destroy the bridge.]**

He sits down beside Ed on the large couch cautiously. "Edward, I -"

"Don't – don't apologise, dammit," Ed snarls, abandoning all pretence of reading.

"How did you know I was going to apologise?"

Ed raises an eyebrow at him. "What were you going to say?"

_'I'm sorry.' But I guess you don't want to hear that._

Roy doesn't reply. The silence is answer enough for Ed, after all.

Ed snorts, pushing his book aside. "Yeah, thought so. Look, the way I see it, it's not that complicated. If what I did was out of line, you tell me so and I'll stop. If it wasn't, you can tell me that, too."

_If only…_Roy sighs heavily. "It's not that simple, Edward."

"Seems simple enough to me," Ed says lightly, and – Roy really should have seen this coming from the gleam in his gold eyes - leans forward, closing the distance between them with a hard kiss.

There is nothing of the light playfulness of last time in the way Ed's tongue parts his lips, only frustration and desire and he can't help but respond in kind. The reprimanding voices at the back of his head fall quiet for once, promising to return with a vengeance later.

Roy can't quite bring himself to care.

 

 

**[Strategy 31 - The beauty trap.]**

In a sense there is precious little to regret – after all, Ed is beautiful spread out over his couch, and he tells the blond so with his eyes, with his mouth and his hands. The blond reciprocates eagerly, heatedly, but with an odd lack of urgency.

There is none of the fumbling he might have expected – clearly, Ed has done this before, and Roy finds himself in the novel position of feeling oddly protective and jealous at the same time.

_No. Stop. Don't think._

Don't think about it.

He concentrates almost frantically on sensation and the moment; the glazed look in Ed's eyes and the arch of his back in ecstasy. If the blond notices his constant need to up the pace, he doesn't remark on it.

It is perhaps a fitting tribute to the desperately degenerate irony of their situation that they end up not in the master bedroom, but in the spare room, the baby's room, which used to house a cot, baby blankets and toys.

The walls that echo back Ed's chant of Roy's name are still painted in soft blue.

 

 

**[Strategy 36 – Escape can be the best policy.]**

Roy wakes alone with the familiar sounds of Ed clattering around the kitchen in his ears in unfamiliar surroundings. He sits up with a start and has to ruthlessly suppress the urge to be sick when the events of the night before catch up with him in this room, morbidly blue and lacking sharp corners.

_Children can get hurt by sharp pieces of furniture. That's what Maes said._

Oh god, Maes. Look what I've done to myself.

He takes several deep, calming breaths, but the voices of guilt and paternal concern are back in full force, and nothing is really going to help.

_It's a strange feeling, being berated by someone for sleeping with their charge when that someone is essentially me._

Ed pushes the door open, startling him out of his thoughts. For once, he looks like he has actually slept, hair loose and tousled and clothes a mess. The top few buttons of his shirt are undone, and Roy can see bite marks – _bite marks_ – on the patch of skin bared.

He fights down a rising sense of panic, but it's an effort.

"There's coffee," Ed offers casually, oblivious to his inner turmoil.

Roy licks his lips and tries to find words. "Edward-"

His tone must have tipped Ed off, because the blond's face suddenly closes off, leaving a bland mask behind.

"Yeah?" he drawls, mock-seriously.

Why does it always come back to these words? Still, they are the only ones he has. "I'm sorry."

Ed closes his eyes for a moment, silent. When he speaks again, his voice is controlled and very, very soft. "You shouldn't have said that, Mustang."

He turns and takes slow, measured steps out of the room.

 

_fin._ (**some say that all's fair in love and war**)

**Author's Note:**

> The strategies were taken from the teachings of Sun Tsu from _the Art of War_ and come from a translation [here](http://vikingphoenix.com/public/SunTzu/36strat.htm). I re-worded some of them for my own purposes.


End file.
